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September 18, 2014 at 09:36 AM
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) is an arm of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), but CMS information technology specialists acted as if they were at war with HHS as they were preparing to launch HealthCare.gov.
The staff of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee use e-mail excerpts and other documents to support that conclusion in a new report on why the HHS Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) public exchange access website had so many problems when it opened for business on Oct. 1, 2013.
The staff quotes an e-mail that Frank Baitman, the HHS chief information officer, received from a CMS employee on Sept. 27, 2013. The employee told Baitman that the section of HealthCare.gov responsible for handling enrollment for the PPACA exchanges managed by HHS had never been able to handle more than 500 users at the same time.
Baitman forwarded the e-mail to Bryan Sivak, the HHS chief technology officer, who replied, “Anyone who has any software experience at all would read that and immediately ask, ‘What the f**k you were thinking by launching?’”
HHS IT officials complained about the lack of detailed information they were getting from Henry Chao, the CMS deputy chief information officer, who helped manage HealthCare.gov development, but Chao seemed skeptical about whether the HHS officials asking for information had any ability to, or sincere interest in, improving the situation.
“If you can’t recognize a burning house and its implications, what good is it to have a bunch of firemen tell you there’s a burning house if you’re not going to do anything about it?” Chao asked in an e-mail quoted in a Baitman e-mail.
Zac Jiwa, an HHS employee, told Baitman: “Your leadership only wanted to hear beautiful music and talk about rainbows and unicorns,” according to another e-mail quoted in the committee report.
